


Pictures in the Pavement and Magic in the Rain

by El Staplador (elstaplador)



Category: Mary Poppins (1964)
Genre: Art, Backstory, Bechdel Test Pass, Filmverse, Future Fic, Gen, Implied Character Death, Magic, philosophising, vocation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-27
Updated: 2013-04-27
Packaged: 2017-12-09 15:27:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/775788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elstaplador/pseuds/El%20Staplador
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time moves on, and when the wind changes, things happen. Usually Mary Poppins is there, somewhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pictures in the Pavement and Magic in the Rain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pauraque](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pauraque/gifts).



1852, and the wind was changing. Mary Poppins, who never arrived early for anything, had seven and a half minutes before her appointment with the lady who would (not that the lady knew it, yet) be her employer for the next month. She had, though, something to attend to in those seven and a half minutes.

She did not, of course, _have_ to walk up the drive; she could have let the wind bring her rather closer and saved her feet - but she had something to attend to.

There was, as there should have been, a girl with her face pressed against the railings of the garden, staring hard at something inside. Mary Poppins stood beside her for two and three-quarter seconds before saying, 'Very uncouth birds, peacocks, I always think. They _look_ very fine, but they make the most atrocious noise.'

'Oh, but miss,' the girl said, not moving, 'I wasn't looking at the peacock. I was looking at the sparrows. Look at that one, flapping around in the dust there!'

'Hm – well, no doubt it's comfortable, if one happens to be a sparrow,' Mary Poppins said.

'I like the sparrows,' the girl said. 'Them and the pigeons. Dunno why no one else does.'

'You may be misjudging everyone else,' Mary Poppins said, and wondered – even Mary Poppins wondered, sometimes – if that was all she had meant to say. Perhaps it was.

  
1910, and the wind was changing. But you know about that time. And you can guess, probably, at how, once Mary Poppins had put up her umbrella and sailed away, Jane Banks would stop at every chalk picture on the pavement, every advertisement hoarding that showed a perfect landscape with a sparkling river running between green hills, and think, and wink, and do a double-blink (because it wasn't really that simple, once Mary Poppins had gone) - and never really be surprised to find herself on the pavement still.

  
1914, and the wind was changing, blowing fear and despair and horror through all the world, all the awful things that won't go back in their box once someone's selfishness, or ambition, or pride, has let them out. Those are things that ought to go in a box, too, but just you try putting them in a box.

Mary Poppins did not belong in a box. She could be in one if she chose, but that was only because she could be anywhere. She put up her umbrella and let the same winds carry her along. Somewhere, she was needed.

(Winifred Banks saw someone in the street with an umbrella with a parrot-handle. It wasn't – she was almost sure – Mary Poppins – but perhaps it didn't need to be. It was enough to tell her that Mary Poppins wouldn't have stopped For The Duration, and so nor would Winifred Banks.)

  
1917, and it felt as though things would never change. People's faces had stuck, in grotesque expressions of despair, or defiance, or delusion. The men were gone from the streets, or clumping like strange wraiths on corners, with ghosts in their smiles; the women bustled ceaselessly, looking thin and pinched and underfed. Jane did not much like to look at people, these days; she didn't care to meet their eyes; she didn't want to see what was in there.

She was dawdling through the streets on an errand for her mother, knowing that she would soon be too old to dawdle, keeping her eyes fixed on the ground – and heard, like an echo from a golden age, 'Jane! Keep your back straight! Are you a weeping willow?'

She wheeled round in delight. 'Mary Poppins! You're back!'

'I always come back,' said Mary Poppins. 

'Where are you going?' Jane asked. 'May I come with you?'

'That was why I came this way,' Mary Poppins said, and indicated that Jane should take her arm.

'Where are we going?' Jane asked.

'Curiosity killed the cat, my dear Jane,' said Mary Poppins, but there was a smile in her voice. 'In fact, I came to see an old friend. No – not you; you're hardly _old_ , my dear, no matter how you might feel about it – you'll see.'

Jane knew the way to St Paul's. She had been there often, with Michael, to see the Bird Woman and feed the pigeons. Her father had even taken them to the bank again – and prudently invested 2d for each of them, himself. But she never quite felt that it belonged to _her_ , or, at least, her alone, and so she was not really surprised when Mary Poppins led her through the City to the cathedral, for Mary Poppins made all cities her own kingdom.

The pigeons flapped and cooed; the sparrows hopped around them. But – Jane realised with a sudden uneasy shock – the Bird Woman had gone.

'Where is she?'

'It has been a long, hard, winter,' Mary Poppins said, 'and she was very old.'

'Oh,' Jane said, and felt a tear prickling at the corner of her eye. 'Was she – all alone?'

Mary Poppins squeezed her hand. 'I was with her all the time, you know. Even when she couldn't see me, she knew I was there.'

'So now?'

'Now I say goodbye to where she used to be.' Mary Poppins bowed her head, and the coffin came past, three black-clad bearers on either side, and a regular procession behind.

'Such a lot of people!' Jane murmured. 'The Dean and everyone!'

'She was an important person,' Mary Poppins said.

'Oh, yes. I just – I didn't think everybody else knew that.'

A few spatters of rain blew in. Mary Poppins put up her umbrella.

'Don't go!' said Jane. 'Or, at least, let me come with you!'

'Very well,' said Mary Poppins, and offered Jane her arm. 'We are not going far. _Now_ \- ' and she stepped, very deliberately, into a wind-ruffled puddle in which St Paul's cathedral wavered and dissolved - and in they went, down, down, with the rainwater rushing past them, and Jane was too surprised to be scared.

'Here we go,' Mary Poppins said, shaking a few drops from her boots. Jane stared. She seemed - both of them seemed - to be completely dry.

'We haven't gone anywhere,' Jane objected. 'Oh, but the sun's out!'

'Really?' Mary Poppins said, with an ironic lift to her eyebrow. 'I have always told you to be more observant...'

Jane looked again, and she saw that the sad, huddled grey buildings of London had suddenly spread out, as if they had been unbound, and were gleaming as they must have done when they were built of fresh new stone, and that between them graceful beech trees flourished. She saw that grass carpeted the streets, and that a flock of sheep roamed around them. Impossible glass towers glittered in the distance.

'Can this be London?' she asked.

'It's hardly anywhere else,' said Mary Poppins.

A gentleman clad in doublet and hose swept off his feathered cap and bowed to them. 'Mary Poppins!' he said, clearly delighted. Mary Poppins smiled, a trifle frostily, but - Jane forgot all about Elizabethan gentlemen, for she had heard a voice, gentle, cooing: 'Birds. Birds.'

She dashed across the springy grass. 'Bird Woman!' she said. 'I'm so glad you're here! And with your birds!'

For, as in the other London, the Bird Woman sat with her flock about her, some pecking at the grass at her feet, some perched on her arms and shoulders, some hopping nearby. 'We all are, love,' the Bird Woman said. 'And no need for tuppences here. Only the birds. Birds, birds.'

'Is this the real London?' Jane asked the Bird Woman.

'It was and it is and it will be,' the Bird Woman said. 'It's as real as the other one.'

'I wish I could stay.'

'There's a time for everything,' Mary Poppins said, from somewhere behind her, and suddenly they were just standing in a puddle, and it was raining again, and Mary Poppins had put her umbrella up.

'Don't go!' Jane said again. 'You've only just got here, and there is so much I need to ask you!'

'Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies,' said Mary Poppins.

'But you _know_ , don't you, Mary Poppins? You know everything. You know when the War will end, and whether women will ever have the vote, and where the Bird Woman is now, and everything! And I don't know anything, and I'm stuck here in 1917, and all I want to do is to step through a puddle or a chalk picture into another world where none of these horrible things happen, and be able to _stay_ there...'

She could feel herself running down like a clock, and Mary Poppins said, 'Very well. Come with me.' And she led Jane around the corner, where there was a man selling postcards, photographic views of the glories of England draped in red, white and blue ribbons.

Jane looked, and shook her head. 'I don't think these will work. I know they show what the places _look_ like, but they aren't pictures _of_ them, are they?'

Mary Poppins nodded, and Jane could almost have sworn she was smiling.

'They don't show the - the _placeness_ of the place,' she continued. 'I couldn't go there, only in the usual way, by train, and then it wouldn't be like that. I can tell just by looking.'

'And that,' said Mary Poppins, 'is the distinction between art and mere pictures. Art shows you the thingness of a thing. A picture only shows you what it looks like.'

'A picture can be art.'

'So it can, but these ones aren't. Which is why I am going to buy you one, to remind you.'

'Thank you, ma'am,' said the postcard seller, who did not appear to be at all affronted by the slight to his wares. 'Here's hoping the weather improves!'

'All the same - it's not fair,' Jane said, as they walked on. 'None of it's fair, and even if I could get into a picture it wouldn't stop this world happening.'

'No,' Mary Poppins said. 'Quite often it isn't. But think about the Bird Woman. She spent all her life on this side, doing something that she loved and that needed doing.'

'Like Mummy.'

'Yes – exactly. Like your mother. She found something important to do, and she's been doing it ever since.'

'But what about me?' Jane was not someone who cried in public, but it was tempting. 'She treats me as if I were nothing more than a test case. I'm not just someone who might have the vote some day! I'm Jane!'

'But of course you are, and of course your mother knows that. And you'll find out, some day, who you were born to be.' Mary Poppins looked up at the birds wheeling overheard, while Jane sniffled into a (clean) handkerchief, then turned back to face her. 'Jane, you must learn that you can do anything you like.' She paused a bare moment, and then said, 'Of course, the most difficult part is the doing it.'

Then she put up her umbrella and sailed gracefully from the ground. Jane stared after her.

  
_Interlude_

Mary Poppins sat demurely on a cloud somewhere over the Adriatic Sea and read her letters (dear Sara: always so good at getting her post to her!). She allowed herself a satisfied nod: here was a postcard from the Queen of the Mariana Trench, expressing delighted gratefulness for her recent sojourn there and the assistance that she had provided (indeed, Mary Poppins thought, a successful episode); and here a basket of wild strawberries, a token from her friend Lotte. Mary Poppins ate one, with respectful attention. Yes. This was a good year for strawberries. She had known many good strawberry years; this, she thought, was rather better than 1768, but not quite up to the standard of 1392. She popped one more into her mouth and turned her attention to the rest of her post.

Now, this was unusual. A kite with a frayed string and a tattered streamer. _Votes for Women_ , it said. Mary Poppins nodded. She approved of votes for women; she approved of votes for everybody, so long as they applied the proper sense and imagination to the matter. She knew, too, who had sent her this item, and she considered that Winifred Banks and her associates had no need of assistance from a third party. She had interested herself in the question of women's suffrage, and concluded that matters were already well in hand.

  
1918, and the wind changed.

  
1925, and the wind was changing. Jane had moved into a studio, but still went to her parents' for tea. She suppressed a smile as her mother cleared a pile of correspondence from the table ('I don't let Ellen _touch_ this; it's far too important.')

'I'm almost surprised, Mother, that you're still working on the campaign, all these years on,' Jane said. 'You've been doing it all my life.'

'But darling,' Mother said, her eyes wide, 'there's still so much to do! After all, _you_ still can't vote, and I shan't give up on it until you can.'

'It doesn't seem,' Jane said, with care, 'like a huge thing, not compared with what I'm doing, now. I want so much to paint, that the vote – well, I'm happy to wait for it, but I have to paint _now_. Mary Poppins told me that I could do anything I wanted, but the difficult thing was the doing it.'

'Oh, yes,' Mother said. 'Mary Poppins was always so sensible. Have another biscuit, darling. Are you sure you're eating enough? One does worry, you know, when it's one's children, and that room of yours looks so draughty...'

Jane, who wasn't at all sure that she was eating enough, took another biscuit. 'Of course Mary Poppins is _right_ ,' she mused, 'she always is. It's just that I have no idea what she _meant_.'

'That you can do anything you like? Well, of course you can, darling, you're so clever, much cleverer than I ever was, and I still found my cause, and went out and fought for it. That was what I wanted to do, you see...'

  
1927, and the wind was changing, and Jane was despairing of ever selling a painting.

It was a perfectly ordinary Tuesday, apart from the rising gale, and there was nothing to tell her that anything or anybody unusual was on the way until she heard a rattling at her window pane, and there was Mary Poppins, smiling, with her head inclined in a may-I-come-in sort of way.

(Jane's room was on the second floor, which made Mother worry less about Strange Men, and more about Fire. Jane was not sure whether either Strange Men or Fire would worry Mary Poppins; in any case, the lack of stairs did not.)

She unjammed the rags from around the sash and forced it up. 'Mary Poppins!' she said. 'What a lovely surprise! Come in!'

Mary Poppins stepped into the room, and Jane felt a curious mixture of elation and dismay. She saw Mary Poppins looking at her brushes standing in their jam jar of turps, and blushed. She found a week-old newspaper and laid them out on it to dry. Mary Poppins said nothing, but looked volumes, and Jane felt seven years old all over again.

'Would you like a cup of tea?' she said.

'Thank you, Jane. That would be very pleasant.'

'I'm afraid that the cups are rather – odd,' she faltered. Two were chipped. One was missing a handle. None of them matched. Or so she would have sworn, until she took them out of the cardboard box she kept her crockery in, and found that she had a matching set of four, unbroken, cups and saucers, in a striking black and gold design. She smiled. She had forgotten how things were around Mary Poppins.

Jane unwrapped the milk bottle from its wet-newspaper cooler, set it on the table (at least she had a table!) and fished the kettle out from under the bed. 'I must just fill this,' she said, suppressing a sigh at the thought of the two flights of stairs and the rusty water that came from the tap in the scullery.

'Oh, you needn't worry about that!' Mary Poppins said, and drew from her capacious carpet bag a large teapot of the sort known as a 'brown Betty'. Steam puffed gently from its spout.

'Mary Poppins, you are wonderful!'

A small smile played over the corners of Mary Poppins' mouth. 'So I have been informed in the past. How about cake?'

'Cake,' Jane said, with fervour, 'would be marvellous! But why are you here?'

Mary Poppins removed a loaded cake-stand from her carpet bag. 'I am here, my dear Jane,' she said, 'to congratulate you on the sale of your first painting.'

'Oh, but there must be some mistake! I haven't sold anything!'

'Jane,' said Mary Poppins, 'I never make mistakes.'

The wind was changing.

  
_P.S._  
1928, and the wind changed.

When she heard, she ran all the way to 17 Cherry Tree Lane, hammered at the door until Ellen let her in, hugged her, kissed Cook, and swung her mother round in circles. 'We're people! We're people! I never realised until now!'

'Didn't you, darling?'

'Well, sometimes...' she admitted, and wanted to add, only when Mary Poppins was around.


End file.
